I get a ton of spam. Spam in my email. Spam calls on my cell phone. And some of the more annoying, text spam.

The Most Manipulative Text Spam Yet

The feature photo today is a screen capture of my phone displaying a text I got the other day. I’ve never seen a more underhanded, low-life way of trying to engage me. Most of my spam texts are along the lines of “Can you tell me why I have your number in my contacts?” This one is way worse than that.

I’m not sure if it’s true, but I’ve been told to never reply to spam. You don’t want to get listed as a “live one” to the spam bots. I’m also not sure if reporting them or blocking them does any good. I’m pretty certain most of the numbers are spoofed numbers and I’m only blocking some random phone number the spam bot came up with to try and look like a local number.

I have to believe that cellular carriers could do something about this if they wanted to. Why would they possibly allow a spoofed number to call or text me? Why wouldn’t they make it a policy to just always show the actual phone number of the caller/texter?

During election time in this country, the number of calls from unknown numbers gets ridiculous. During other times, I’m not very bothered by this nonsense. But for some reason, this latest ploy of tugging the sick-pet heart-strings really annoyed me.

Regardless…I did not reply.

Current Knitting

Another Bindle Hat finished. Another Bindle hat started.

The big “V” stitches of this stitch pattern keeps the confetti feel of the multi-colored yarns intact. It’s a great use of the Latvian Braid stitch. I also love the crown shaping of this design. It rounds out even my pointy head. Finally, I’m quite pleased with the roll-up brim color on this latest hat.

Here’s the beginnings of perhaps the last Bindle Hat I’ll make for a while.

It’s almost more waste-yarn than actual knitting. But I wanted visual proof that I’ve started a new one.